Mortal
by Clefspear
Summary: It was said that one day a mortal hero would walk among demigods. That he would rise above all other heroes known to mortals, or immortals. That he would save the gods, from their worst enemy. This hero's name is Perseus Jackson. (Reformatted, So that is actually readable ;) )


A/N: I am reloading, because apparently when I first uploaded it, it was all unformatted, and horrible.

Summary-It was said that one day a mortal hero would walk among demigods. That he would rise above all other heroes known to mortals, or immortals. That he would save the gods, from their worst enemy. This hero's name is Perseus Jackson.

Chapter 1

The council of the gods sat in the throne room of mount Olympus.

"We should just kill her!" shouted Ares. "Keep this bloody prophecy from taking place."

Zeus reached for his master bolt, but Athena beat him to it. "Idiot, you should know that fighting prophecy doesn't work. Especially after the trojan war. Maybe we will kill, her, but another will simply crop up. And if the fates protect her, than she will be our enemy, and spell our defeat." She sneered at her all time least favorite olympian. Mainly because they were constantly rivals, as they both held the war domain, or at least something approaching it.

"We will not be killing my daughter, and that is final" Zeus threw his bolt into the middle of the floor where it proceeded to make a crater.

Hera rolled her eyes, he could be so childish sometimes, there was no need to go destroying things. Sadly that was how his mind work, smash a few things and all your problems are gone. She knew everyone would drop the matter, at least for now. They knew there was no arguing with him when he was in this mood.

She sneered, but Instead of arguing pointlessly, she prepared to make her own proposal. "You all remember the great mortal heroes" She looked at Athena pointedly, hoping to win her as an ally in this argument. She thought she could seeing as the hero she was about to name had been special to Athena. "Such as Odysseus, and Jason." She saw the effects the name of Odysseus had on her, and felt the effect the name of Jason had on herself. A strange mix of feelings. Disappointment, anger, sadness, and love all twisting painfully inside her like an EF-5 tornado.

"The prophecy speaks of a mortal, a bloodless one, one without the blood of the gods in his or her veins. We all know that fighting prophecy is pointless, it has been tried over and over again over the millennium, and has always failed. Whether we like it or not, a mortal will be involved with the battle which will certainly come. The fact that that mortal is mentioned in the prophecy shows he or she is important. We know we can't fight prophecy, but we also know that prophecy can be manipulated to our favor. All you have to do to realize that is to remember how the birth of Achilles came to be. Therefore, I would suggest, that we take a clear sighted mortal, a male, so he will not be burdened with the gift of prophecy and train him. We make him powerful, and faithful to us. We are prevented by the ancient laws from training, and protecting demigods more than we do already, but there is no such rule about mortals."

The gods spent hours arguing over her proposal. In the end they agreed, she was fortunate to start out with Athena arguing in her favor. A rarity. The proposal was changed, and altered somewhat, the specifics argued over, but in the end her motion passed, with the same basic core ideas that it had started with. This was her second chance to try again. All of her children had been failures, even Jason who had been as a son to her had failed, and broken his sacred covenant with Medea, her most important tenant. She was the goddess of marriage after all.

-Line Break-

I ignored the Giant dog. I always did. Maybe if I ignored them they would go away, and I would be normal. It was a bit crazy really, I learned at school that the world was totally without magic, or god, or anything supernatural. However my eyes constantly told me that that couldn't be true, at least not entirely. I've seen some pretty whacked stuff. Like dogs jumping out of shadows, and in the winter I even saw saw giant ice men thingys, who could throw cars, though they preferred snowballs. I saw crazy stuff like that, and I wasn't the only on either, my friend Rachel saw them too.

I got home and saw my uncle working away on his Lenovo laptop, as always. I would spar with him later in the evening. For now however my uncle was characteristically uninterested in me.

I sniffed the air, and caught the sweet scent of cookies. I simply followed my nose, the way any male seventh grader would. I found myself in the kitchen, where my Grandma June was baking cookies. I knew they would be peacock shaped when the came out. I didn't know why my grandma was obsessed with peacocks, I simply hoped it wasn't hereditary. I walked up, and hugged her.

"Mijo, welcome back from school, do you want some cookies?" She asked. Around the house we always spoke, slipping between Greek, Latin and English, and as witnessed, even a bit of Spanish or other languages. That last sentence had actually been an amalgamation of the four.

I nodded quickly, just as a timer went off, and she reached into the oven to remove a pan of hot, chocolate chip cookies shaped like peacocks.

By the time I was done we had already had the standard: how was your day conversation. "Grandma, your cookies are... Divine" I made a habit of being nice to anyone with food, as a general rule.

She smiled strangely to herself at that, and said "Thank you. I try. Now go do your homework, so that you, and your uncle Charon can spar reasonably soon. I want to watch." She said with a proud smile.

Usually I resented being told to go do my homework, but I didn't mind this time, not if it meant I would get to go show off my sword skills to my grandma. I knew this was weird, for a family to all be experts with weaponry, I had trained my entire life with swords, bows, maces, axes, spears, knives, and any other weapon imaginable, though I focused on ones from ancient Greece, and Rome. Grandma and my uncle told me that they came from an ancient, and great family, that had been fighters since the beginning of creation, and would continue to be until the gods themselves were thrown into Tartarus. That was another strange thing about my family, they were obsessed with anything ancient Greek, or Roman, especially their gods. I was also forced to learn ancient Greek, and Latin, as earlier pointed out. It hadn't been hard though, I had learned them as a baby the same way I learned English and I could speak them fluently. I always had to be careful to not slip into them around my friends. Other kids would just look at me blankly, and the mean ones would call me a freak. I could have taken any bully easily, I was also trained in every form of hand to hand combat imaginable. However they had quickly learned not to mess with me, and I didn't provoke fights, so the only time I was in one was when someone else was being picked on, and I stepped in to help them.

I went to my room, and found myself bored out of my mind at the easiness of my homework. It was such a waste of time. I finished it up after a few hours, then headed out to find my grandma just finishing up some dish or other, probably Greek. I didn't recognize it, but that was no surprise she had quite the assortment of various recipes.

"Your Uncle is ready for you." she said. "The arena in 20 minutes."

It constantly amazed me how she knew stuff like when I would be ready, She was excellent at planning ahead.

I nodded, and headed down the arena in the basement of our mansion. My uncle had an extremely high paying job: manager of a transport service.

I walked down the stairs, and glanced around our basement. There was a ginormous, big screen tv with the latest gaming consoles hooked up, then a number of games such as ping pong and pool. A cupboard with every board game my uncle, grandma, or I liked. But the center, and crowning glory of the basement was the coliseum or arena as we usually called it. It was large about the size of the big pool at our local YMCA. Did I mention our house, and especially basement was gigantic?

There were about three rows of seats going up, the way a normal Colosseum's seating plan would work. Although there were only three rows you could still fit several hundred people around. It seemed like a waste of space to me. The only people that had ever been in here to my knowledge were me, grandma, uncle Charon, and Rachel. I wasn't sure why grandma agreed to let her see it, she seemed to like Rachel for some reason. I don't know why but I was happy, Grandma was quite secretive at times, I suppose I was too. It kind of rubbed off on me. Still it was nice to have one person to confide in, both the weird stuff we saw, and the secrets of my crazy family.

I walked to a weapons closet, and dug out a sword, I chose my favorite one of the Greek variety. It was bronze with the word Anaklusmos engraved in it. I knew the word meant riptide. I pulled out a shield, black as the night with the Pegasus on it. I strapped it on my arm Adamastos, it was ancient Greek for untamable. I then grabbed a small, bronze, Scottish, dirk, the same bronze as riptide. It had been unnamed till I had appropriated it. I then proceeded to name it sting, after Frodo's sword in The Lord of The Rings. I glanced at the Roman assortment weapons. I trained heavily with them, but for one on one fighting, they were inferior to Greek equipment. The Romans were better at fighting as a unit, and their weapons attested to that, but they sacrificed the one on one capabilities of a weapon like Anaklusmos. I walked over to one of the dummies in the arena, and started whacking it, practicing basic strokes. Ultimately every complex move could be broken down into the basic ones. I went through a shortened version of my regular training routine, but I was careful not to get too tired, I needed my energy to fight uncle Charon.

After about 15 minutes of light practice he strolled into the arena. I knew his kit was similar to mine, a shield and sword in the Greek style, however instead of having a dirk like mine, he had a traditional Greek dagger. The main difference was that the dagger was shorter. I especially liked the long reach if I had to use it against him. All of his weapons were made out of the strange dark metal that my shield was made off, and none of the bronze. He was better, faster and all around superior. However I knew he had been practicing for a lot longer than I had been.

We both walked in front of the emperor's/announcer's box, where my grandma was sitting, I hadn't heard her enter but I wasn't surprised. She had a habit of showing up places without you having any idea how she snuck past you.

"We who are about to die salute you." We chorused at the same time, before giving a typical Roman salute. Of course there wouldn't actually be any killing, the worst that might happen was a broken bone. The swords had been dulled, they would hurt a lot, but they wouldn't kill. There were extra points given if you could disarm, and touch your sword to a vital part of your enemy, without giving them anything makeup couldn't cover. Charon's favorite thing to do was to disarm me, letting me pull out my dirk instead of going right for the kill, than disarm me again, before declaring his victory. He was always a good winner however. If I had a dagger, then I wouldn't stand a chance after I lost my sword, the length of the dirk was still shorter than his sword, but long enough to buy me a few extra minutes.

We turned to face each other, and Grandma yelled. "Begin"

We circled each other slowly, each of us waiting for the other to present an opening we could use. I felt Grandma June's eyes on my back, evaluating, but of course I didn't look around. That would be as good as forfeiting, when fighting as good an opponent as my uncle.

He however dropped his guard. I instinctively knew it was probably a trick, so I didn't overcommit, but I did jump forward, and attack. Effectively bringing the fight from a state of limbo, to a full out melee. I knew our swords were moving at incredible speeds, the kind of speeds you could only achieved after about 8 years of training, beginning when I was about 5, and working extremely hard constantly ever since. Our swords flew quickly, the world seemed blurred as my mind focused entirely on my uncle, his eyes, body language, and sword. I had been trained to watch everywhere, to be able to take on any surprise threat, but this match had clearly laid out rules, there wold be no surprise attacks from some other party, and I would need all my concentration if I was going to win.

I didn't think I simply acted and reacted, blocking a slash to my midsection, and a hammer blow to my head. I caught many of the strokes on my shield, then as he recovered I would strike with my sword, through of course that was why he had a shield. It all went wrong, when he caught my sword on his shield, then did something risky. He lowered his sword and shield, and sent a quick snap kick to my wrist. Before I had time to take advantage of his openness, my hand was dropping the sword, and he was shield bashing me against the wall of the arena. The force of the technique made me hit my head against the arena wall, hard. I then saw only blackness.

-Line Break-

When I came too, I felt strangely well, reinvigorated even. I looked up, and saw grandma kneeling over me.

"It'll be ok, you are all healed now, Mijo" She said using her favorite term of endearment.

"Wait, What? got..." I tried to remember. "Shield bashed into a wall."

"That is right, but now you are ready to continue fighting." She replied. "But this time without weapons, just fists, and feet." She motioned to my uncle who smiled apologetically. He had indeed ditched the weapons.

I knew I should probably just lay down and go back to sleep, I probably had a concussion or something. I also knew that grandma wouldn't let me, she would call me a little girl, and remind me that our family was ancient and full of warriors. Plus I wanted to get up and fight. I had always been a closer match with my uncle, at hand to hand than I had been at sword play, though either way he was still far above me. When I won, which did happen from time to time, it was because he let me.

I got up, and grandma nodded approvingly. "Good, strength." She then walked regally back to the emperors booth. Both she and my uncle walked with extreme confidence, they both knew they were the baddest beasts around. Both master fighters. I had seen them sparing, and my grandma had serious skills for a woman her age. In fact when she fought, she was as strong as a young person. She seemed practically immortal. I wondered if my parents had been the same way, I wondered if I would one day be that way, confident, and young always, even in old age.

We faced each other, both of us in a fighting stance. I took mine from Taekwondo, I knew he took his from one of the versions of Karate. We faced each other, and grandma yelled "Begin."

I started first, moving forward in a way unique to martial artists, sort of a skip, sort of a hop, retaining my fighting stance. I used my momentum to generate a powerful roundhouse kick, from my still perfect stance.

He jumped out of the way, and counter attacked with a crisp snap kick, the same kind he had used against me in during the sword fight. I ducked under the technique, before using my coiled legs to jump a few feet away, and met his charge, with a quick block of his side kick, followed by a crescent kick. He jumped back, but I used the momentum from my crescent kick to follow up with a jumping crescent kick, moving my leg to within striking distance. He blocked my leg, and when it had lost most of the force pervading it he grabbed my leg, and tried to pull me in, but I had been expecting it. I jumped of my leg still on the ground, as well as pushing of somewhat from the leg he was holding and swung the leg he wasn't holding onto at head height. He let go of my leg, but my other one still came in contact with his nose. I landed carefully, caught my balance, and backed up a few steps.

I politely let him recover, though I knew he didn't really need it, and in a real fight I wouldn't. It was however a nice few second long break for me. I saw that his nose was spurting red blood. I congratulated myself, first blood.

Of course the fight was far from over, but it was definitely a good beginning. The battle continued like that, punching and kicking. I got a black eye, and we both accumulated several nasty bruises. The fight continued like this, both of us sweating streams. I knew however that his endurance was far better than mine, and mine was exceptional for a kid my age.

I would have to end this soon, try something risky, or he would win just because of his superior endurance.

I thought about how I had gotten him the first time. The same thing probably wouldn't work again, but what if I tried doing what he had tried doing to me, except improved on it.

I waited until he tried to crescent kick me. I did what he had done, blocked, then grabbed. However as I was blocking I was already squatting. I caught his foot, and hoisted it over my shoulder, then I stood up, and judo throwed him. The Judo throw I had used was a variation on one of the ones My uncle had taught me.

With a normal Judo throw with practice mats in a controlled environment, both opponents will make sure the other is ready, then the person doing the throwing will countdown from ten. When he reaches zero he will place his back to his enemy, pull his enemy's arm over his shoulder, lift his enemy with his waist, and then bang him over his shoulder, onto the floor using leverage from the arm. The enemy will then use an oft practice landing, and rolling technique to spread out the force of the blow, and keep himself from being hurt. It is safe, and painless.

What I did was different in a number of ways. I basically trashed a long cherished, and respected technique, but what was the point of them if you couldn't adopt them to your situation, right? Instead of his arm I lifted his leg, and he had no Idea it was coming. The leg was of course longer, so I had more leverage, and more force, though It was also a lot harder, I don't know how much my uncle weighed, but it must have been a lot. Fortunately for me he didn't know it was coming, and didn't use his landing, and rolling technique. It was probably not safe, and certainly not painless. Or maybe it was, seeing as he was knocked right out.

A/N: so I hope you liked my story, or at least the first part. You guys should go leave a review if you liked it. It doesn't take much time, and it means a lot to me, as well as following, favoriting etc... So yeah...

Thanks for reading

-Clefspear


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